Neighborhood Speed Control
By Charles Russell, 21 May 2011
Thesis: Changing our neighborhood traffic speed so everyone can be safe, when they want to take a walk, jog down the road and or even ride their bikes but most important, protecting their most valuable asset; their children.

There is a beautiful upscale Washington DC suburb called “Kingstown” located in Alexandria, VA. This is the area my family and I decided to live about five years ago. We purchase a townhouse located off a street called “Chelsea Search Way” which is a cuddly sac off another street named “Summer Ridge.” This is the main street going through our neighborhood and links many cuddle sacs together. Summer Ridge is like one big loop that turns off of Kingstown Village Parkway and then reconnects after a mile and a half. Summer Ridge is one of the liveliest streets neighborhoods you would ever see. Everywhere you look there are small children playing, people walking their dogs, joggers running and bicyclist’s riding. The only problem with this is that this neighborhood could be one of the most dangerous places because there is a lot of traffic going up and down this road. Each year over 4,000 sons, daughters, mothers & fathers were killed while walking in their neighborhoods or crossing streets.
Fairfax County must not understand that there is a problem here, because the speed limit was set at 25 miles per hour, which I believe is way too fast for such a playground. Not only the speed is the problem, you have Metro and school busses driving through and cars parked on both sides of the road making it almost impossible for two way traffic at times, not only that think of the hazards of this. Let’s say you had to park on the street and you where opening your car door to get in and a bus come alone and smashes you and your car door. That is just one of the tragedies I’m trying to prevent.
The first fix I would put in place is to slower the speed limit, all the way down to “15” mph. I think 15mph is hard to do at times, but most police officers don’t give tickets anyway until your 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. The second thing I would do is have the speed limit and the words “Slow Down” painted in large bolded letters on the street itself. Then the third thing would be change all the speed limit signs to look like live children holding the sign and place them in the middle of the road instead of the sides. The fourth thing I would install small bumps in the road so it would immediately draw their attention to the speed change. I don’t want to install the big bumps because this not only would be hazardous to cars but would slow down emergency response vehicles.
I would also re-route the metro busses to continue down Kingstown Village Parkway instead of turning down Summer Ridge. It would be a small inconvenience to those who ride the metro busses because they may have to walk further instead of stepping right out their door to catch the bus. School busses should be OK; they only come by maybe twice a day, and they are carrying our most precious love ones, our children.